Her bra size? Ava laughed out loud, a sound like a barking seal. Finally, late night TV had taken a turn for the better. Go on, Gregoria, go on!
“What happened was I went on a cruise with my girlfriends. On the ship I got so utterly seasick I couldn’t keep anything down—not even chocolate.” The picture on the TV flashed to a “before” picture of Gregoria Jergens. Ava thought she looked fine, healthy enough, if on the thin side. “The rocking of the ocean liner had me heaving over the side like a maniac for nearly a week. When we finally docked at Cozumel, I expected to look like a scarecrow in my bathing suit.”
Then, another photo flashed onto the screen. It was clearly Gregoria, but her figure had changed dramatically—she suddenly resembled a Barbie doll, at least in the chest measurement sense. Ava looked closer. The photo had to have been doctored, really. But all the same features were there otherwise. She was even wearing the same swimsuit—the only difference being her breasts were completely spilling out of the bikini top in the second photo.
“Believe it, folks. The toxins in chocolate had been suppressing the hormones in my body that created breast growth, and when I quit cold turkey, the effect was immediate and dramatic.” Gregoria stood up, slimmed her top, and flaunted her buxom chest. “I cut out chocolate and cured my CBTAS, and so can you!”
Ava gave a final donkey laugh out loud, let her head drop back onto her pillow, and slipped back into a mouth-breathing Thera-Flu-induced 24-hour sleep.
* * *
The next day, Ava awoke again feeling even worse. Her throat seemed like it was about to close over, preventing any air passing through to her bronchitis-crusted lungs. Her eyes felt an inch closer together than they had the night before. Her appetite was completely nonexistent, but she kept sipping Capri Suns because she knew if she didn’t she would dehydrate.
She really should try to make it to the shower today. Maybe the steam would open up her nasal passages.
Things that usually meant nothing to her seemed strangely important, like the amount of light coming in through the lace curtains and the relative scratchiness of the blanket she now held versus the one clear across the room on the recliner.
On the other hand, things she normally cared a great deal about mattered next to nothing to her. Like, what day of the week it was.
Not today. Today, all she could do was exist.
She tottered toward the bathroom, somewhat blacking out. A glance in the mirror made her feel worse. No wonder Enzio Valente thought she was a man at first.
Did people really put that much stock in appearance?
Lying on her bed and staring at the ceiling in mouth-breathing, lung-searing agony, she took a few minutes to mentally dissect the criticism Enzio’s cruel buddy had hurled at her. “Robot” didn’t describe her appearance as much as it did her manner. Was Ava really so much like a machine?
She paused a moment and considered her behavior and conversation toward the people in her life. Sure, with Zoe, and with family, Ava spoke openly and with warmth and emotion. But at work, professionalism was called for, wasn’t it? Organization, precision, no wasted words. She’d seen first hand and felt the painful effects of idle chitchat bandied about in the workplace. She didn’t like it. Nor did she like the informal tone Harmony Billows took with everyone—like their teasing younger sister, even if she looked more like the older, spent-debutante sister.
But the men she overheard didn’t seem to dislike Harmony’s irritating personality. Didn’t Enzio say she “had something?” Maybe that was his friend. She couldn’t remember now, in her medicated haze. The point was, Ava in her careful plainness had been the butt of their jokes while Harmony in her flirtatious ridiculousness “had something.”
Impenetrable mystery, that.
If she honestly evaluated her behavior toward her coworkers, she could kind of see where the robot label came from. She didn’t go out of her way to be warm, and she always tried to keep up a steely guard.
She slouched off to check her phone, to see if any emergencies of the world required her final measure of energy.
There, in her bulging inbox, flashed eleven messages from Kellen McMullen. All the subject lines contained variations on “Pay Up, Sultry Woman.” It was blatant sexism. If Ava hadn’t been sick as a dog she might have mustered a degree of outrage high enough to refuse to put up with such insults, on the grounds that she was somehow prostituting herself for this donation. However, today …
There, among the Kellen demands, was a blessed respite, a note from Zoe, subject line “Long Message from Me!” Ava hoped it would be a simple litany of Zoe’s latest exploits in the Sky-Copter of Channel 4, and not anything to do with men or relationships, or Ava’s appearance.
She clicked on it hopefully.
First of all, watch the mail for a package from me, Ava. It’s the wrong dresses I bought this week on clearance. Such tremendous bargains. Such terrible fits. If only I had a more buxom bust. Should I do that surgery where they suck out fat from your fanny and reinject it into your bust? I’m thinking about it. But not this paycheck.
Now. For the better part. Remember that relationship guide my mom sent me? It’s so funny. Awesome. I’m just going to put a few of the super sparkling gems here for you. I’m sending you the whole thing in my next clothing-mistake-mailing, but here’s the executive summary.
Ava didn’t know if she was up to a 1959 guide called How to Snare a Modern Man today, but maybe she might as well not ruin some other perfectly good day.
Be fascinating. Captivate your man with your femininity. Wear feminine fabrics, style your hair in feminine curls, laugh with a little trill. Radiate happiness. Speak in soothing tones, always warmly, gently. Treat him like a man, and tell him often how strong and manly he is and that he makes you feel safe. A man likes to feel masculine and important. Tell him how smart he is, and what a good provider he is. Compliment his strong, masculine body. Help him but never overshadow him. Never do the difficult physical tasks—always ask a man. For example, never open a jar again. Get a man to! Make him think anything you want him to do is his own idea, and then compliment him for thinking of it with his superior intellect. This may require a mild form of deception, but it is how the game is played. If you want to snare a modern man, you must think two steps beyond and be a truly modern woman.
Do you love it? It’s so funny. I left out the more archaic stuff, like never drive yourself anywhere—that’s a man’s job, and don’t get a job in the workforce or you take away a man’s prerogative to provide for you.
I turn to it when I need a good chuckle. But I’m thinking about trying her advice to pout when I don’t get my way. Ha ha. I like that.
More advice about appearance—the curls and the flowy fabrics this time? Why was Ava being barraged on every front on this? She didn’t know. But she did know she was tired of things being the way they were.
Ava coughed a racking cough. She wandered into the hall and down toward the siren calling of the full length mirror.
There, before its cruel and unforgiving revelations, Ava rubbed her bleary eyes and wiped her dry skin under her red nose. Her face looked sallow, her eyes hollow, her hair limp and lifeless. The three-day-old pajamas had wrinkled in all the wrong places, making her look more frumpy than ever.
For the first time in years, Ava examined herself with an appraising, if illness-clouded, eye. It was easy, since the flu made her feel like her soul was separated from her body anyway, to look at herself as if she were someone else. How did others see her? What was that word Zoe quoted from Oprah? Schlumpadinka?
She slouched. Her face was blotchy and acne-ridden. Her clothes entirely hid the fact that she was a woman. She styled her hair in the severe Ice Hag style, with crazy occasional grey strands escaping in frizzy wildness. She looked like a bag lady in front of the Capitol. Worst of all, she frowned. All the time.
No wonder.
But inside, Ava knew herself to be someone quite different, someone driven and able but w
arm and friendly—if a bit reluctant to be the center of attention. Perhaps because of this she did her best to make sure she would blend into the woodwork. But now she almost resembled one of the forest animals where the woodwork originated. Not good.
How could anyone see past her plainness to the sparkle Ava hid inside?
Will Enzio ever notice me? Will anyone?
Worse, something awful was coming—like a barreling freight engine on a steep grade. What would happen when she did eventually get better and had to meet Kellen McMullen face to face? Would he run away screaming? He was inevitably going to discover Ava was nothing like the sultry-voiced maven he assumed he met on the phone. She prayed the consequences didn’t involve him reneging on his donation.
She had to do something—big. And soon. Now.
Some kind of radical change was brewing in her, but four days without solid food (even chocolate—because who could swallow chocolate with a throat like this?) weakened her physically, as well as her will. She took a long hot shower, got dressed in clean pajamas, and pulled her waist-long hair back into its usual bun.
Enzio. Could things have been different? She felt like Peppermint Patty on Charlie Brown, with Marcie always calling her sir. And didn’t Peppermint Patty have a perpetual unrequited crush on Charlie, whom she called Chuck? But Charlie went for the Little Red Haired Girl, never “sir.”
All this time Ava had put forth such an effort to be the most efficient version of the female creature out there. Why wouldn’t a man, with his logical mind, go for the high efficiency model? Instead these purportedly rational beings went repeatedly for the high-maintenance type girl, while Ava spent no money on makeup or clothes or hair. Not only was she low maintenance, she would come cheap to the lucky buyer who snapped her up.
Suddenly a thought crossed her mind. Maybe that which we obtain too cheap we esteem too light. Or lightly. Or whatever. She’d heard it somewhere—Thomas Paine, Shakespeare, somewhere.
But whoever said it, it applied here. Desperately.
An earthquake of change rocked her. Now. The time had come to make a change.
Digging out her debit card, she dialed the QVC number for the makeup. “Intrepid, please. The works. Yes, with the revitalizing mascara. Yes, I’ll pay for overnight shipping.”
Then she padded across the wood floor past the unpainted wall back to her bedroom closet. There at the back lay all the unopened bags and packages of clothes from Zoe from the past three years. Ava didn’t have the heart to tell Zoe she didn’t wear them, nor did she have the heart to take them to Goodwill. And now, for the first time, she was glad.
Gingerly, she lifted a stack of envelopes and boxes and threw them on her bed. It was just a drop in the bucket of all the castoffs from Zoe. For the next several hours, Ava opened up dozens of packages. Bags littered the floor, and piles of clothes covered the bed. Everything from blouses and skirts, to little black cocktail dresses, to heels and the most frightening underwear Ava had ever seen. There were bras in every color and size, pantyhose in all their varieties, jewelry from dainty to gaudy. It blew Ava’s mind.
Little by little, the entire vision of a plan began to unfold in her fevered brain.
Ava Young was going to give herself a total makeover—and more than just a Clinton and Stacy pulverizing.
Much more.
First, she would grit her teeth and deposit all her hideously shapeless man shirts and trousers—her “man suits,” as Harmony Billows called them—into a big nasty trash can, so she could totter recklessly into the uncomfortable world of the flatteringly dressed. That would take a world class effort for Ava, definitely.
Next, how does a modern man like a woman to smell? Floral. Well, she’d have to throw out her men’s deodorant. Dang it. And it worked so well. Better than women’s. This was going to stink, on many levels. Maybe perfume? But not as much as Harmony’s.
But the real gut-wrencher would come in efforts beyond that. She hated to admit it, but when Ava read the email on How to Snare a Modern Man, something sounded in her mind like the ping of a triangle in the orchestra. She had wanted to ignore it, but now she knew—in spite of the archaic-seeming ideas, a lot of nuggets of wisdom lay there. She didn’t graduate summa cum laude from college and come away a total numbskull. Strains of the old Big Bopper song “Chantilly lace and a pretty face and a ponytail hanging down” wafted through her mind.
A perceived personality revamp was in order. If everyone in her office thought of her as robot, cold and mechanical, she needed to warm up, become more flexible, fluid. Like the Southern genteel ladies she’d met over the years.
She’d have to peel back those carefully honed professional layers and expose her real heart—the non-Ice Hag one. Instead of every sentence that fell from her lips sounding terse and cold, she would be accessible—what did the Zoe’s email advise? A trilling laughter, a soft word, a warm smile?
Could she actually do that? No. Wait. Maybe.
She had a flashback of a time, a lifetime ago, when she was forced to be in a high school drama class. She needed an elective credit, and the only classes open were either drama or woodshop. Her mother didn’t want her to inhale all the sawdust, so Ava ended up in drama. The teacher Ms. Fishbeck forced the students over and over to “get into the character” they were assigned—to really believe they were Stanley Kowalski or Peter Pan or Marian Madam Librarian. For Ava the operation was truly painful, but it did give her training that may strangely come in handy.
Ava took a deep breath and made her decision. Like cult devotees of days gone by, Ava was ready to proverbially shave her head and drink the Kool-Aid—to save the exhibit. And maybe show the knotheads at work she wasn’t a robot after all.
* * *
“Hi, Zoe?”
“Yeah? Who is this?”
“It’s Ava.”
“Whoa. You don’t sound like you. Are you okay? Hey, I’m just about to get back into the news van. Can I call you back?”
“Sure, but I have a quick question. How do I put on these Spanx? Is that what they’re called? Spanx?”
“Ava!” Zoe yelled in shock. “Wait a sec. Hang on.”
Ava overheard Zoe yelling at someone, presumably the crew of News 4 Denver, that she had an emergency phone call and she’d be back in five minutes.
“Oh. My. Gosh. Is this the first time you’re putting those on? Best underwear ever. They are going to change your world. Make you look ten pounds thinner and five years younger. Totally great. Wish those were my size. I had to buy a different pair, but I could use two. I hope you love them.” Then Zoe proceeded to instruct Ava in the art of girdle wearing.
“Now, to maximize the effect, you’ve got to get the best fitting bra you can, or else you’re just wasting your effort there. You’ve got to get away from the old uni-boob, Ava. No offense.”
Ava quickly dug through the piles of bras on the bed and found one that looked okay. She hadn’t worn anything but stretchy sports bras for years. This one worked fine. Perfect fit. Wow, and lacy pink. Whodathought?
“Thanks, Zoe. I know you’re busy. But this was necessary.”
“Sure. Anytime. But are you okay? What’s all this. I mean, Ava. I know you. I know you really well. You’re not usually the Spanx type. What’s going on? Have you gained some weight? You can tell me.”
“No. Just the opposite. I’ve been sick and lost like 18 pounds. I can about see my ribs now.”
“Huh. Wish I could get that kind of sick, without being sick.”
“You don’t want this.” She coughed a hacking hoarse earthquake for emphasis.
“Ew. Hey, I’ve got to dash. Wait. What size bra do you have now? I’ve got some I need to send you. Check the one you’ve got on.”
Ava checked the tag. “Looks like a … 36D.”
Zoe started to laugh. “You’re so funny. Go take some cough medicine. I’ll call you later,” and she hung up.
Ava furrowed her brow and looked again at the bra tag. She squinted her eyes.
Really, the printing was clearly the size she told Zoe. She rifled through several others and tried them on just to be sure. Huh. All the 36Ds and the 34Es fit better than anything else. Had bra sizing changed since Ava last picked up a Hanes Sport last year?
Then echoes of Gregoria Jergens, late night infomercial confessionalist, fluttered through Ava’s head: CBTAS. Chocolate Breast Tissue Allergy Syndrome.
Naw.
Not really! Ava started a barking seal laugh again.
It couldn’t be! Of all the weird things that had happened to Ava in her entire life this had to be the ultimate weirdest. Going off chocolate had set her chest a-bloating, in spite of weight loss everywhere else on her frame from the illness.
No. Way. Ninety-nine percent of her didn’t believe it. But the evidence jutted clearly from her full figured chest.
Well, Ava mused, now glancing up at her tangle of crone hair. I might as well make the change radically complete. She dialed the phone number of a nearby hair salon. “Hi. Is there anyone who can bleach my hair blonde this afternoon? Yeah, it’s long—to my waist. An hour? Thanks.”
Chapter 4
Ava got up two hours earlier than her usual 7:15 on Monday morning. Her cough had quelled significantly, and her fever was totally gone. The runny nose she could keep under control with over-the-counter medicine, and she was finally able to eat enough of a ham sandwich here and there to remedy her blacking out from calorie deprivation.
She was dying to get back to work. With all the time she spent convalescing, the project of coordinating the Hudson River Masters exhibit was passing her by. She had a strange feeling that things had been going well, but that they were going to go south sometime soon. Very soon. Especially if she didn’t get back right away to stop it.
But today, getting ready for work was suddenly a huge operation.
In spite of all the practice she had done with her new array of cosmetics, her fingers were still awkward. She jabbed herself in the eye with her liquid liner brush twice before she got it just right. The shadows were easier, once she decided to consider her eyelids the palette for her artist hands. She followed the booklet that came with the mailing—it gave instructions for a “smoky eye,” which looked more to Ava like a traditional “shiner,” but she took a deep, determined breath and decided to go for it.
The Lost Art: A Romantic Comedy Page 5